Rotoscoping

Music video released in 1985 featuring lead Morten Harket, who, as one of the industry’s best tenors, sang falsetto, shot to #1 on the Hot 100.

Title: “Take On Me”
Art: pencil-sketch animation and live-action mix called rotoscoping.
Method: Live-action footage is traced over frame by frame to give the characters that are drawn realistic movements.
Length to complete: Around 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, taking 16 weeks to complete.

Studiobinder.com says, “Back in the day, animators would project live-action images onto a glass panel and then trace over that image. Today, rotoscoping is predominantly done on computers.”
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“Rotoscoping in Star Wars is one of the most famous examples. In the first trilogy, actors held a matte propped up on a stick. Later, effect technicians traced over the matte to create the glowing lightsaber effect.”